Honeywell has won a $15 million smart-grid contract with Connexus Energy that will provide the utility's co-op members in seven Minnesota counties with remote electricity reading for the first time.
The project, announced early Wednesday, is expected to help Minnesota's largest customer-owned electric cooperative improve service, eliminate the need to manually read meters and help the utility's 130,000 customers better manage energy consumption.
Under the project, Connexus will replace its 22-year-old electricity meters with 138,000 of Honeywell's EnergyAxis meters and Honeywell's new SynergyNet mesh networking software.
Honeywell will manage its part of the two-year contract mostly from Raleigh, N.C. However, experts from Honeywell's Golden Valley campus will help with marketing, product training and project management, said Mike Caranfa, senior vice president of Honeywell's Smart Energy division.
The new meters are being installed in every Connexus customers' house or business across Anoka, Chisago, Isanti, Ramsey, Sherburne, Washington and Hennepin counties. So far, 600 meters have been installed. The rest will be installed by mid-2018.
Once fully installed, Connexus' new meters will communicate with each other, download meter readings to area routers and send the data to Connexus' headquarters in Ramsey for analysis. The data should create a clearer understanding of electrical usage across its entire region.
"Before Connexus got one meter reading [per customer] a month. Now, they will have hourly meter readings from the members," Caranfa said.
That should give Connexus real-time data on customer energy consumption and lead to more accurate billing and earlier detection of any meter-tampering or outages, Caranfa said. It may also lead Connexus to set up different pricing for times of peak energy loads.